Taking Travel to the Next Level with Technology

As I finish packing in preparation to head off to Cape Town for World Travel Market Africa, I cannot help but reflect on all the travel I have managed to do recently both for business and pleasure. India, Jordan, and now South Africa all within the start of this year, and the Faroe Islands and other destinations yet to come. It is a stark contrast from just a few years ago, when all of us were stuck at home and aching for adventure. I feel very fortunate.

By now, I know just how much time to leave for the airport because check in takes ages, as will security. I need to ensure I have all my documents handy and ready to present at various stages of the process. I know that when I land, I need to schedule my transport knowing customs will take a while and so will baggage claim. And by the time I finally reach my hotel room, I will be totally exhausted from the ordeal.

As any seasoned traveller knows, the journey is part of the price you pay for the experience once you reach your destination. But what if all of it could be efficient, hassle-free, and enjoyable? What if the airport could be a breeze, and the hotel felt like home once you arrived there? What if travelling was just an all-around great experience from start to finish? Could technology facilitate that?

That was the central idea of my presentation at World Travel Market London back in October 2022, and a major overarching theme of all I’m doing at World Travel Market Africa next week. I’ll be busy in Cape Town, moderating two separate panels about travel tech trends before delivering my own Keynote on artificial intelligence (AI) on day two of the conference. Even just my initial chats with the industry experts on both panels have been insightful and conducting my own research to ensure I’m fully up to date has been enlightening. While I’m excited to learn more at the event and check out some new tech, there are a few areas of use cases for travel, tourism, and hospitality that I think provide excellent opportunities for businesses in these sectors to really make an impact on their customer experience.

?Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

Chatbots may not be the flashiest form of AI today, but they are incredibly useful. This is especially true for short-staffed hospitality or travel businesses who need to deliver top quality customer service without cutting any corners. These solutions are easy to adopt yet effective and can be massively helpful for improving customer experience with little to no human intervention. These tools have also improved in recent years thanks to advancements in natural language processing (NLP). By now, many of us have probably played around with ChatGPT, so we have had a flavour of what this looks like in practice.?

Most airlines, hotel chains, travel agencies, and booking providers employ this technology in their business to help with tasks such as answering questions, providing personalised recommendations, sharing important updates related to the customer’s itinerary, cross selling relevant products (i.e. rental cars and experiences), making reservations, and more.

With many reliable vendors already in this space, the barrier to entry is low for businesses in these industries looking to integrate these smart assistants into their website, social media, or mobile apps.

Robot Staff

My trip to Cape Town will see me change over in Johannesburg, and my only regret is that my layover isn’t long enough for me to pop over to Hotel Sky to check out their fleet of robotic staff. The hotel employs three robot concierges named Lexi, Micah and Ariel that can deliver room service, provide travel information, and can drag up to 300kg of luggage from the lobby to guests’ rooms. They are not the only hotel adding automated helpers to their teams with major players such as IHG Hotels, Marriott, Hilton, Wyndham, Mandarin Oriental, Millennium Hotels and Resorts, Hyatt, and various independent hotel brands also doing the same. These automated butlers can deliver room service and other items to guest rooms, assist with housekeeping, and alleviate pressure on restaurant wait staff.

It’s no secret that hospitality is experiencing a talent shortage, and many in this space have turned to robotics as well. Cecilia.AI is a robotic bartender that mixes and serves cocktails and uses artificial intelligence to talk to customers, while F&P Robotics’ Barney bartender can mix dozens of cocktails, disinfect itself, and even tell jokes. Italy’s Makr Shakr offers two bartending bots that have been installed on nine Royal Caribbean cruise ships. Nala Robotics has developed three fully automated chef robots, capable of making hundreds of different dishes from various cuisines. Their proprietary AI chef hardware and software can adapt and create dishes precisely as customers request them, ensuring their food is customised to their preferences and dietary requirements.

Not only can these bots have major potential to help alleviate some of the pressures on human staff across tourism and hospitality, but they also add an element of uniqueness and fun to the guest experience. Guest will go home and tell their friends about how a robot made their dinner or delivered them towels, or they might post a video on social media of a robot making their drink. It’s a novelty that, while useful, gives guests something memorable to take home from their experience.

Facial Recognition

?Facial recognition technology has raised a lot of ethical concerns within law enforcement, but in travel and tourism it could be a real asset. What if you could go to the airport and instead of digging for your passport and boarding card, your face could check you in and help you board the flight? My colleague recently flew on a Delta flight from Seattle to London and rather than presenting her passport at the gate to board, the agents used mounted tablets with facial recognition software to scan her face and verify her identity. At the Detroit Metro Airport in the US, Delta is using similar technology to offer fliers what they call the ‘Parallel Reality Experience’, which you can see for yourself in this video.

The applications of this technology span even further. Some hotels are trialling using this tech to enable hotel guests to use their face as their room key, payment method, and more. This can help speed up several processes that require identity checks.

Management and Operations

Beyond elevating customer experience through novelty and convenience, AI can really benefit travel businesses on the back end. AI can assist with various time-consuming activities such as booking management, marketing, and property management.

Businesses in the travel industry are turning to AI to streamline their operations and maximise their resources, especially airlines and airports. For example, the Netherlands’ Eindhoven Airport is currently undergoing a pilot programme through 2023 using an AI system called BagsID to streamline the process of moving and tracking passengers’ luggage. Instead of using physical bag tags or RFID, travellers upload a photo of their baggage through a BagsID-connected app, which automatically links the bag to their flight information for easy check in, tracking and pick up. Delta Airlines developed and built a full-scale digital simulation of its operations, which an AI system uses to suggest ways pilots can manoeuvre the aircraft during bad weather to cause the least disruption to passengers onboard. Air France uses AI to analyse flight data to assess fuel efficiency of journeys and reduce emissions, and British Airways uses AI to improve its operational efficiency and maintenance, and to predict on board food uptake.

These are just a few of the many examples out there for how AI can help take travel, tourism, and hospitality to the next level. I really look forward to hearing from the other presenters at World Travel Market about their experiences, predictions, and trends. Perhaps there are other technologies and use cases on the rise that we have not even considered yet.

Looking Ahead

But to bring this technologically driven future to life and revolutionise travel as we know it, we are going to need strong leadership and the right skills to help make it happen. We need to be looking to the next generation of the workforce and the talent, potential, skills, and ideas they will one day bring to the table.

That is why I am so excited to have been able to bring my Leaders of Tomorrow in Travel Tech schools project to South Africa as part of the World Travel Market Africa event. This version of the successful programme has equipped students from two Cape Town schools with several sessions from myself and other industry leaders to learn about technology’s impact on their future careers. Competition submissions have begun rolling in, and I look forward to the finalists’ presentations at the live event next week. It has been so rewarding to present this programme internationally, and hearing the students’ ideas truly inspires hope and excitement for what the next generation will achieve someday. If the students from all three Leaders of Tomorrow cohorts are any indication, I’d confidently say that our future is in great hands.

But for now, I’m off to Heathrow for what will neither be the first nor last time this year. For those of you attending WTM Africa, I will see you in Cape Town soon. For the rest of you following along wherever you may be, I’ll do my best to keep you all up to date as the event takes place.